


A Girl in Gold

by HeshMan96



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Story, Time Lord
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 03:38:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2413556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeshMan96/pseuds/HeshMan96
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lillian is an ordinary street girl in ordinary New York. She lives a happy life and has a good people with her. When her unknown past starts to bite at her heels, she discovers who she is, and a deadly secret that will resonate throughout the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Fanfiction and I've been toying with this idea for a while and I decided to upload it to both this site and Fanfiction.

Prologue:

_The Last Day of the Time War_

_Gallifrey_

“EXTERMINATE!” The hoarse cry of the Dalek echoed throughout the debris-strewn streets of Arcadia. Bodies littered the ground and lasers and death rays flew through the ashen orange skies. Dalek pods flew through the skies, being closely followed by battle TARDISes. The anti-aircraft guns of the Time Lords were all but destroyed, and there was next to nothing that could stop the Daleks now. As the War Doctor, Tenth Doctor, and Eleventh Doctor all plotted to save Gallifrey from the Daleks, and as the thirteen TARDISes closed in on Gallifrey, a quite different problem arose in the chamber of the High Council.

Lord-President Rassilon slammed his fist on the table, denting it. “I am well aware of the fact that we cannot save Gallifrey, Minister,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. However, Rassilon’s eyes gave it all away. They were red and raw from frustrated tears. “I just want to save my son.”

“I know that sir, but with all due respect, we simply do not have the means to transport your daughter off planet safely,” said Minister Tyrus firmly. “The Daleks have been monitoring all means off this planet, throughout all of time and space. There is absolutely nothing that we can do.”

Rassilon drew himself up. He wiped his eyes and took a deep shuddering breath. He straightened his maroon robes and took off his time lord headgear.

“Then activate the Genesis Protocol,” he said gravely.

There was an immediate uproar in the chamber.

“But Sir!”

“No!”

“Absolutely not!”

Rassilon growled. “Need I remind you that I am the ultimate authority on this planet and can execute you this very moment?”

The room fell silent.

“I thought not. Now do. As. I. SAY!”

The people scrambled to follow his instructions. Rassilon sank down into his throne at the head of the council table. He suddenly felt weak. He rubbed his forehead and said, “My daughter... Please do well. Do me proud.”

Gallifrey fizzled out of existence as the power of the Doctors’ TARDISes zapped it into another universe. Nobody saw the toddler-sized craft simultaneously hurtling through 79 moments in time and space.

 

 


	2. The Big Apple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about this chapter, it's not my best work, and I hate it.

_New York, New York, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy_

_2016, Earth Time_

The skies above the city of New York were an inky black. On a hill nearby, a young couple gazed at the sky imagining things. Deep in the city below, cars honked at each other to no avail, drivers swore and each other, and somewhere, a mugger was getting slapped. The young couple lay on the hill, staring straight up, imagining new futures, laughing and talking. The boy was big and muscular, but not grotesquely so, with chocolate eyes and blonde hair. The girl was a brunette with a slight figure and pale blue eyes.

The two lapsed into silence. A new star popped into existence in the skies above. This did not go unnoticed by the pair. They laughed like young children and gazed at said star. But something was off. The two could not identify it, however. They sighed and looked at each other. They shared a long kiss as the skies twinkled around them.

“Tyler?” said the girl.

“Yes, Linda,” answered the boy.

“I have something to tell you.”

“Yeah?”

Linda flipped over and dragged Tyler up with her. She got down on one knee. To Tyler, her eyes shined like quasars in the night.

“Tyler McFinney, will you marry me?” she asked emotionally.

Tyler’s eyes widened as she asked the question. “Lemme think,” he said. Linda’s face fell. Tyler left in suspense for a few moments. Then he suddenly smiled a colossal grin.. “HELL YES I WILL MARRY YOU!” he yelled. He tackled Linda in a hug as she giggled. She mimed choking.

“Can’t…breath…can...see…light,” she said. She wrapped her arms around his neck as they both started to kiss. It wasn’t until the scene around them became eerily bright that they broke apart. The both looked around looking for the source of this light. Tyler looked up. His eyes widened. What he saw chilled him to the bone.

“Move,” he said, his tone suddenly sharp and panicked. Linda could tell he was in a no nonsense mood. Tyler pointed to the sky and said pointed to the sky at the star and the girl’s eyes widened.  

The new star that had popped into existence earlier had gotten bigger. It was now twice the size of the moon and was getting bigger, and heading straight for them. “Holy fucking shit!” screamed Linda. “Run for your damn life!” Even in a situation like this, Tyler was surprised that Linda was swearing.

The ball of flame hurtled towards them. As it came closer, the newly engaged couple heard a burning, crackling sound, along with another noise, a more familiar noise. Tyler’s curiosity peaked despite his terror.

“Are those jet engines?”

“NO TIME TO WORRY ABOUT THAT NOW!” Linda roared. “RUN!”

TOm and Linda began to run down the hill. The pair tried to avoid tripping and falling as the raced down the hill away from certain death. The slippery grass and steep slope hindered their efforts. Both of them were halfway down when the star crashed into the hill. There was a horrible ghastly silence mere milliseconds before impact, but that felt like hours to the bystanders of the phenomenon. The crickets stopped chirping. The birds stopped twittering. Cars stopped honking. Everyone, no matter where they were, experienced a fleeting moment of intense tension and worry. Then the moment came.

WHOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!

The star rammed into the hill with all the force a freight train carrying explosives and unstable plutonium. Fragments of the hill flew everywhere, and a shockwave carried all around the crash site, bringing a massive dust cloud with it. The wave spread across New York, cracking roads, disrupting water lines,  Dust billowed everywhere, obscuring the vision of everyone and everything within two hundred feet. A huge fireball shot some two thousand feet into the sky, and was seen by people all across New York.The two people were brutally thrown down to the foot of the former hill with huge force, each of them slamming into the ground with a nasty crunch. The couple unsteadily stood up, covered in dirt and embers, wincing in pain and trying to staunch the bleeding. Tyler’s nose was bleeding and his legs were cut badly, a massive wound running down from his left thigh to his left big toe.Linda had a nasty cut on her forehead and her arm was at a sickening angle. Indeed, Linda seemed to have lost so much blood that she seemed delirious.

Far away, in Washington D.C., Homeland Security and the Red Cross prepared to mobilize on the site of the crash. Many planes and army vehicles closed in on the area, prepared to contain anything that landed on the planet, if anything landed on the planet. The CIA called in Canton Everett Delaware III for one last favor. In England, UNIT and Torchwood alerted all staff to a possible alien incursion. Captain Jack Harkness was called to Earth, and was grumpy that he had to leave his wrestling match on Sontar. Martha Jones phoned her contacts, including her husband Mickey Smith and the man in the box.

As the planet’s defensive units began to close in on Manhattan, Tyler tried to staunch Linda’s bleeding. He refused to think about what could happen if Linda died, because Linda was not going to die. Regardless, his eyes started welling up with tears. He ripped his shirt in half plugged the wound on her forehead. He knew there was nothing he could do for her broken arm. He prayed for the best as he lay down next to his soulmate and assumed the fetal position, ignoring the rough, heat-cracked earth, and wept silently. He suddenly heard a series of high pitched noises behind him, and turned around. A cloud of yellow specks began to close in the two, a large mass, writhing and rearranging its shape, doing nothing for more than two seconds. Tyler turned around with effort, trying not to restart the bleeding on his leg. He spread his arms protectively over Linda’s bloody form. He was prepared to defend his fiancee to the last. A low growl started in Tyler’s throat as he balled his fists. He closed his eyes, waiting for the pain to come to him. But when nothing happened, he opened his eyes, and to his amazement, the cloud of yellow specks were clustered around each of their wounds. Tyler could feel his leg knitting back together, and when the cloud of yellow seemingly disappeared, nothing remained of either of their injuries. Linda began to stir and murmured something indistinctly. For the first time since the crash, Tyler felt some hope. He gently held Linda’s head in his hands, so gentle for one so big.

“Linda? Linda please come back to me baby,” he said, his voice cracking. His eyes started to water. Linda fidgeted slightly and her eyes fluttered open.

“Nuh? M- ah uuuhhh,” she groaned.

Tyler gasped and scooped her up in his arms and held her tight, crying. Linda weakly punched his back.

“Let me go, big guy, I’m fine,” she said lightheartedly. “What happened?” Then it all came back to here in a flash.

They both turned to look at the crash site. Sitting there was a silver sphere, bright white, coated it some sort of alien diamond, about a meter in diameter.. The sphere started beeping loudly, the entire structure flashing red. The object floated up until it came to hover about two meters from the ground.

The small hatch opened up in the sphere with a creaking noise. and white smoke billowed out. As the smoke cleared, the couple caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a control room inside the sphere. But that couldn’t be, the sphere couldn’t be bigger on the inside… could it? Their thoughts were abruptly interrupted when a small girl that looked to be three years of age clambered out.

She looked confused and didn't seem to notice the two figures standing up a few meters away. She spoke in a strange language, screaming at the sky. When the sky offered no reply, the girl’s face fell and her eyes started watering. She sat down on the ground crying silently, shaking every so often and as new round of sobs overcame her. The girl in the couple felt her heart softening. She began to slowly approach him. Tyler grabbed her arm, and she winced.

“Are you crazy?” he asked, his eyes, curious and wild. Suddenly, he was the cautious one.

“She’s just a lost kid, Tyler,” she said. “She needs help. And even if she is dangerous, he can’t hurt us. I know a sad person when I see one.”

Tyler’s eyes softened, but there was still some caution embedded deep in them.

“Okay go, Linda, but be careful,” he said.

Linda slowly crept forward, avoiding the smoldering flames that were still all around them. There was a loud beep and Linda screamed, toppling backwards. Tyler caught her just as a bright light flashed out from the sphere. The light came out of a small blue cylindrical tube attached to a robotic arm that came from the same hatch as the girl. It flashed the surrounding area. It seemed to be scanning it. The light settled on the pair and its color changed from white to green.

The sphere then spoke in a harsh electronic voice, seemingly in the same language that the girl used. “Jakldaslhhuew whsdoia ashuuiauydsiau dsbask (A/N: I have no idea how  Gallifreyan sounds.) weaioqwesnfmph.” The sphere continued in that language when on abruptly changed into English. “Aysiyibgiewluoppa. PLANET IDENTIFIED. DESIGNATION EARTH. DOMINANT SPECIES: HUMAN. LOCATION: NEW YORK. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH. ADJUSTING TRANSLATION MATRIX.”

Linda shook off Tyler and continued forward. Tyler hurried after her.

“Are you sure that it’s safe?” he asked cautiously.

“Only one way to find out,” Linda said grimly. They both crept up to the pod and Linda spoke to the girl in a calm soothing voice, for she had once worked in a day care.

“Hey,” she said. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

The child turned around, her eyes red from crying. Her dusty and grimy face was streaked with tears. Shee looked up into Linda’s kind eyes. Her face was lined with stress, far more that normal for a child this age. Her eyes were a deep violet color. When she spoke, he spoke in an intelligent, soft, suspicious voice.

“Where am I?” she asked. “What planet is this?”

Linda and Tom shared a glance. So this really was an alien, the glance said. “This is Earth,” said Tom gently. “In the Milky Way Galaxy. Ever heard of it?”

The child sighed. “Briefly. This planet has not yet achieved interstellar travel, correct?

“Yes.”

The child opened his mouth to say something, but then the sphere started to beep again. “Don’t worry”, she reassured when she saw the pair’s worried faces. “That’s normal.” The child got up, but was interrupted when the sphere began to beep again.

Tired of not knowing, Tyler said, “What is that thing?”

“A part of the Genesis Protocol, which-”

The girl was cut off when the diamond sphere began to speak in the same harsh metallic tones. “HOSTILE FORCES INCOMING. PREPARE TO REVERSE ALL DAMAGE. SEND OUT HARDWARE NANOGENES.” A swarm of specks similar to the yellow ones that fixed the couple’s wounds, descended in massive droves on New York. These specks were black. The onlookers on the remains of the hill looked as the city of New York stopped smoking and slowly every cracked window and broken sewer tunnel was fixed. The sphere continued “PREPARE PLANETWIDE MEMORY MODIFY.” It began to beep teal slowly, but increasing.

“Okay maybe you should worry,” she said.

Everyone began to panic, except for the girl. She sighed. She looked at the other two, who were gibbering to each other as to what to do. The girl’s patience snapped.

“WILL YOU SHUT UP?” she roared. The other two looked at her, stunned. She continued in softer tones. “There is nothing we can do. That pod is made of white-point star diamond, the most indestructible substance on Gallifrey. Nothing on this planet nor anything else for five billion light years could stop it.” The trio fell silent.

“What’s going to happen to us then?” asked Linda quietly, bringing herself to ask what no one else could.

“Well, all the humans will forget this ever happened,” explained the alien girl. “All that will remain is this crater. You two will most likely experience some recall, since you were closest, maybe in your subconscious, or dreams. I will be transported to the nearest human area, most likely here, in this New York place. I will be made a human, and made to fit in. I will have no memory of this.”

The girl’s calm exterior broke as she started crying again. “I just want to see my father, and all my friends again,” she sobbed. Linda walked over and rubbed her back comfortingly. Tyler stood to the side awkwardly. He turned around, looking at the newly-repaired. He heard faint noises, including a chok chok chok chok noise that sounded suspiciously like helicopter blades.

“Guys,” he said warningly.

Helicopters and tanks were rapidly approaching, along with police vans and army jeep. Also with the army regiment came ambulances and strange trucks with weird cannons that bore a T made of hexagons. The trio prepared for the worst as the pod beeped with intense rapidity. “MEMORY WIPE INITIATIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING! There was a massive flash that spread across the entire planet, enveloping entire cities in mere second. People began feeling intense headaches as Planet Earth came to a standstill.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.


	3. The Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, not as good. It gets better I promise.

_Dalek Ship, Medusa Cascade_

If one were to look out into the seemingly infinite vastness of space, that person would see a large number of star systems, nebulae, and things that looked nice, but were simply large gas clouds from dead stars, also known as space farts. They look nice, with iridescent colors, thunder-like flashes, and dark pits. Some of these resemble human anatomical parts, while others can be interpreted in any way that the viewer wants, similar to the universally renowned abstract painter Jankov Djiridna, from planet Failcllon-7, who painted by regurgitating his organs into the time vortex (for the beings of Failcllon-7 were regenerative), catching them in a net, slapping them on a canvas, and giving them absurd names like “DickButt.” But enough about Jankov Djiridna from Failcllon-7. One of the aforementioned star systems is known as the Medusa Cascade. It is a fairly magnificent cosmic phenomenon, full of greens and blues and vast dark clouds encircling the center, which is similar to the eye of a storm, in that it was the only area for several galactic leagues (1,000,000 light years) that wasn't covered in space farts. But the thing that stuck out the most to passerby at that moment was a massive monstrosity in the middle of the eye of the Medusa Cascade. Said monstrosity was a massive circle, what the resident of Terra Firma, also know as Earth, would call an Unidentified Flying Object. It had large semi-spheres on its underside and was roughly fifty human miles across. Things prowled inside of the ship, making whirring noises as they walked, or glided, across the floor of the ship. Shaped like cones, with an irregular base and brass balls lining it and a domed head with an eyestalk and whisk death ray and a plunger-like multifunctional tool halfway up its base, these creatures were Daleks. The most vicious and demonic creatures in the universe, they were nothing but evil and sought to conquer all the free lands of the universe. Right now, they were planning some dastardly things indeed. In the control room of the ship, the Supreme Dalek, its white coat setting it apart from the brass coats of the others, manned the ship, steering with its plunger.

“Have we managed to capture the Doctor?” it asked to the blue Strategist Dalek.

“No we have not, Supreme Dalek.” it rasped haltingly in a standard Dalek fashion. “You know the Doctor is nearly impossible to capture.”

The Supreme Dalek screamed in an un-Dalek-like fashion. “THEN FIND HIM!” he roared, fury clouding all his thoughts and his judgement. His death ray went off firing off into the Dalek senate. It hit one of the brass grunts and it exploded with a long, carrying scream of agony. He continued in a harsh, mechanical whisper. “The Daleks are close to extinction. He need a plan. Need I remind you that this is YOUR plan Strategist?”

The Strategist Dalek was cowed. “I do not need a reminder, my Supreme.”

“Good,” drawled the Supreme condescendingly. “Now find the Doctor. SET ALL TIME ANOMALY DETECTORS TO MAXIMUM.” The massive ship started to move into the vast vacuum of space, groaning as it went through the Medusa Cascade. The gas swirled all around  the eye of the cascade. All was quiet, quieter than usual, even though sound did not travel in space. Suddenly a massive bright white flashed through the ship. The light dimmed down slightly to reveal something astonishing. A crack was spread through the entire medusa cascade, glowing a magnificent pale white. Tendrils of white energy spread out from the crack enveloping anything stupid enough to be in the vicinity. The Dalek ship headed straight for the crack in the Cascade.

“TIME ENGINES ON MAXIMUM, SUPREME,” said the orange Scientist Dalek.

“Excellent.”

There was bright white flash, and in the next moment, both the starship and the crack were gone, only leaving the gas clouds and the empty, desolate eye of the system.

 

**Lillian**

_New York, New York, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy_

_Friday December 15, 2032_

If an extraterrestrial ship were to fly in on the coordinates 40.7127° N, 74.0059° W on Earth, they’d see an area on an island surrounded by water, and on that area would be towering spires of light and rock. Unfortunately, said extraterrestrial ship would not be able to see anything at that precise moment; for heavy snow blanketed the city in its frigid embrace. On the ground, people drove around and swore and went about their daily, or nightly, business. While the area on the ground had its perks, it had it bad things too. Rape, rampant sex, drugs, murder, thievery, and more were all common in the city. These were the thoughts that Lillian Davies was thinking as she strolled through the crowded streets of New York. The finest city on Earth, in her opinion. Sure London was pretty and Tokyo was amusing, but New York had a notoriety, a feeling that attracted millions of tourists each year. Those, and Lillian. Lillian was a girl of 19, and was a street child. She didn’t think she was pretty, but she noticed she was turning heads of people in the streets, and not just men. Women were also attracted to her, and she found herself thinking, Why are there so many lesbians in New York? She shrugged it off and continued to her destination. Lillian had long and luxurious fiery red hair, but she usually kept it up in a tattered old green beanie hat. She wore a long black trench coat and she wore an old North Face sweatshirt under that. Her eyes and nose were stinging and her freckles seemed to be freezing off. Not to mention her ears, which were just chips of ice at this point. Yet she found herself smiling.

“Damn snow and its mass genocide of freckles,” she said with a grin. The next moment she found herself being flung backwards onto the three inches of snow on the ground.

Despite her good mood, she knew she had to keep up a menacing air in New York. Nice and caring wouldn’t do in New York. Even though everything was covered in snow and ice, this wasn’t no damn Disney’s Frozen or some crap.

“Watch it asshole!” she growled threateningly. The person she knocked over got up and she was surprised and slightly terrified to find that this figure was well over six feet tall He took off his fedora and shook off the snow. He flapped his hands around his long trench coat, trying to flap the snow off. His face was lively and youthful, though Lillian could see streaks of gray in his bright blonde hair. His chocolate-colored eyes flashed in the night. Lillian squeaked.

“I’m sorry, Sir, please don’t hurt me, I don’t want to die,” she cowered kneeling down and clasping her hands together in a praying motion. The man laughed, a deep, rolling, childish giggle.

“Get up, girl,” he said, trying to keep a straight face. His eye were still alight with laughter. Lillian was pleasantly surprised to see his slight Scottish accent. “I am not going to hurt you, I just want you to look where you’re going.” He wandered off into the swirling streets, still chuckling merrily. Lillian walked away shaking her head. She needed to get back to her home. At least, what she called a home. A shooting star raced across the sky.

“Make a wish,” she whispered to herself. She continued to trudge through the filthy, snowy streets of New York. In the skies, the shooting star continued to hurtle through the heavens of Earth. Lillian weaved in and out of the crowds. Busy people, doing Christmas shopping, or simply partying. She turned a corner and entered a small alley in the side of two buildings. The alley was dark and mean with cracks on the stone walls on either side. Lillian proceeded through the other side of the alley. Two tall, dark, and well built figures. A flickering firelight from either side illuminated their faces. They were scruffy with small scars and cuts. That, couples with their light stubble, gave them a menacing and disapproving air.

One of them growled in a Brooklyn accent. “What’s the password?”

Lillian was silent for a moment. The she started laughing hysterically. “Guys, cut it out,” she gasped out. The two men eventually cracked a smile and picked up Lillian roughly by the arms and legs. They carried her to an abandoned building adjacent to the alley. They led her inside, where a group of people were living, huddled around fires. There was a few furniture, except for a number of moth-eaten mattresses. The people all cheered. Lillian yawned widely. An old woman screeched irritatedly.

“Get her to bed you idiot bastards!” she screeched loudly. Lillian hobbled over to a mattress and flopped down onto it. Sleep enveloped her in its warm embrace within minutes.

Her dreams that night were dark and troubled. Usually, she was a heavy sleeper, but since she started having her period, she slept fretfully, with disturbing dreams. Now, she was having another one. She saw the infinite vastness of space and in it, a dark orange planet. Its mountains stood proud and tall, the cities vast and populated. The people ran and laughed, wearing strange mismatched garments, hats, ties, pants, fezzes, and other things. The dream changed. Her vision filled with swirling yellow particles that looked like… energy? The same city, but burning and destroyed, people panicking and running, weird brass tank-like creatures robotically screaming battle cries. The scene shifted. A group of people were sitting at a table. All of them suddenly ran away except an old man sitting at the head of the table, sobbing.

“Please Lillian, be well,” he cried. Lillian’s heart broke as she thought about how this strange alien man knew her name. Once again the scene changed. A man and a woman paced around inside a circular room.

There was a platform in the middle and a catwalk lead to a set of wooden double doors. The sides were supported by metal beams and glowing white circles encircled the place where the shadowy roof met the walls. Around the edges, sets of stairs descended to other corridors which presumably lead to other rooms. In the dead center of the room, a clear extended up to the ceiling, where it met the ceiling with a series of rotating disks, with glowing white circles on the sides. Inside the column, rods of blue pumped up and down. At the base of the column, a hexagonal control panel circled it. Tons of buttons and levers and odd bits and bobs filled all inches of it. On the sides next to the railings, there were even more control panels with bits and bobs and buttons and levers. The entire room glowed with a dull blue light.

A man in a white shirt and a knee-length black overcoat circled it. His black trousers shuffled noisily as he paced around the room anxiously. He paused to straighten his bowtie and he turned around to face a figure gazing over the railing of the center platform.

The man called out in an English accent. His voice was youthful. “Clara, you might not want to stand so close to the railing,” he said. His babyish face smiled.

The figure at the railing turned around to reveal a pretty woman with a round face and long brown hair. She wore a brown sweater with a blue skirt and black stockings. Her sneakers squeaked as she walked away from the railing. “Doctor, I think you’re going slightly mad.” She spoke in a light voice with a slight Cockney accent. The man called Doctor smiled.

“Aren’t I always mad, Clara?” he said jokingly.

Clara shook her head. “More mad than usual Doctor,” she said. “I mean from what the TARDIS said, you have encountered signals like this before, and they have all turned out to be complete tosh. The fact that your machine is talking to me alone is weird!”

The Doctor man rubbed the control panel. “She didn’t mean it, Sexy, no she didn’t,” he cooed. He continued to rub the control panel and eventually kissed it.

Clara rolled her eyes. “That’s weird. You’re like a man in love with a good car.”

The Doctor’s eyes flared. “The TARDIS is not a car!,” he hissed. Dream-Lillian assumed the TARDIS was the room they were in. “Can a car go to Androzani? Can a car kill a Raxacoricofallapatorian? Can a car blow up the universe?”

Clara was unfazed. “I never said it was a car,” she stated.

The Doctor paid no heed and continued his rambling. “Can a car cause a time paradox? Can a car regene-” He was suddenly cut off when the TARDIS started groaning.

“What is it girl?” asked the Doctor worriedly as the machine groaned again and the rooms shook. Clara almost tumbled over the railing into oblivion as the room spasmed violently again. The Doctor struggled to keep is balance as he fought his way over to the control panel.

“This is not good, this is very not good. Oh, where are the boring-ers, where are the boring-ers?” he muttered frantically. As his hands flew wildly over panel, Clara tried to not die.

“Doctor!” she yelled. “Not to rush you, but could you hurry up?”

“I’m trying, Clara!”

His hands found a series of small blue switches and the Doctor began mashing them wildly. With each tap, the room’s shaking lessened slightly. “I think it’s working!” yelled the Doctor excitedly. As the room stabilized, Clara groaned and dragged herself up off the floor. Her hair was a mess. Her sweater and stockings were ripped, revealing her legs and a bra strap. She hobbled over to the Doctor, brushing stray hair out of her eyes.

“What the HELL was that? she said.

The Doctor was still pacing around the control panel. He grabbed the TARDIS monitor and swung it around to face him. What he saw surprised him and delighted him at the same time. The monitor began beeping wildly. The Doctor groaned again. “Oh that is not good that is very not good.” The monitor showed four words. Just four words. But those words would change the universe forever. “TIME VORTEX MANIPULATION DETECTED” flashed in blaring orange letters on the screen.

Lillian woke up.

 

 


	4. The Time Freeze

**Lillian**

_New York, New York, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy_

_Friday December 16, 2032_

“-ot good, that is very not good.”

“TIME VORTEX MANIIIIIIIIIPP-”

“GAH!”

Lillian Davies woke with a start from her weird dream. Her breathing was slow, deep, slightly panicked. Before the dream started to fade away, Lillian tried to recall it, and it popped back in astounding detail. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen that man, that... doctor. No, she had seen the Doctor dozens of times prior to this. Thirteen different men, all going under the same name. Doctor. None of the men looked alike, and none of their personalities were the same. They ranged from old to young, bubbly to brutal. The man she had seen was one of the younger ones, very young.

She clearly remembered his silly little bowtie, his flamboyant hat, his incredibly stylish hair. However, that was the first time she had seen the old man in the meeting room. He had said her name. Why had he said her name? More importantly, how did he know her name? And then he had cried. It seemed that the old man… cared about her, not just in the way her buddies did, but paternally. Another thing that was disturbing was that the old man seemed to think she was dead. Lillian shuddered. She wasn’t used to having a family, people who cared about her. Sadness overwhelmed her thoughts, longing for something that she had never known. Snapping out of her randomly spawned nostalgia, she got back to pondering the latest installment in her strange compilation of dreams. They could even be interpreted as visions. Lillian shook herself. Visions? She laughed derisively. Visions, my ass, she thought.

For another matter, what was the strange city she saw? It had majestic spires and domed buildings and walls and murals inscribed a strange language written in circles. It the very middle of the city, there was a massive circular chasm. In the dead center on the chasm, there was a large glass dome, suspended over the hole by eight catwalks, and in it, a series of skyscrapers colored bronze. These dwarfed the ones in the main city by several thousand feet. At the top of the dome, there was small collection of buildings, seemingly where the government of this magnificent city was. An oligarchy, Lillian thought. An oligarchy was a form of government where all the power rested on a small group of people. Then she was confused. How had she known that? Her vocabulary was not exactly extensive. A minute later, Lillian had seen the same city, burning, ravaged by strange robots.

She sat up and opened her eyes. Her curtains around her bed, or mattress, fluttered slightly. The window in the wall directly beside her was heavily laden with frost. A cracked digital clock by her side showed the time was just past midnight. She blearily rubbed her eyes, and managed to rub out the grit. She ran a hand through her hair, wincing slightly at her hand tore at her tangles. She sat there for a few moments trying to recall more of her dream. She dug through her head shoveling through loads of memories. For some reason, she could never remember anything from before she was three. Anything before that was… fuzzy, at best. It was unnatural, like nothing had ever happened before that time. She couldn’t even remember being three, or having parents, or having a birth, or anything. It was as if someone had taken the time to surgically remove her memories and erase any trace of her early childhood.

She rifled through her thoughts to the deepest recesses of her mind, trying fruitlessly to regain her early childhood memories. Her head started throbbing. This was normal. Lillian forced herself to go through this pain each and every day of her life since that fateful day when the orphanage burned down. However, this time, the unthinkable happened. Something came to her through the blinding red haze of the pain. A name. Lillian struggled to grasp it before the pain wiped it away. R...R...Ra...Rass… It was gone! Despite all of her efforts, she had failed to reap the fruits of her labor.

“Fuck!” said Lillian softly, as to not wake anyone up. Incredibly hot rage filled her thoughts. She sat there, silently fuming. The first time she had captured a remnant of her childhood in sixteen years, and she had to go and dun-diddly fuck it up, didn’t she? She lay back down and put her head on the pillow and try to escape her failure as she drifted back into the comforting dream world.

Just before she went under, she heard a harsh, mechanical voice say, “Possible match detected!”

 

“YO! IDIOT!” The screech rang out in the foggy recesses of Lillians sleepy mind.. It pierced Lillian’s brain and sent her ears into a throbbing frenzy. Lillian shook herself awake. The throes of sleep still lingered in her eyes, and clearly showed in her hair. In her current disheveled state, Lillian resembled a very used troll doll. She dimly registered the voice that had so rudely awakened her.

“Whuzzamatta?” she mumbled groggily. “The pirates have captured the Queen’s prostitute, haven’t they?” A rough, creaky, feminine voice answered her.

“You overslept,” said the voice. “Y’all people need to know what to do. This place ain’t gonna fix itself. Some windows need patchin’, girl. ” Lillian’s eyes still had yet to get used to the glaring light of the morn’. “Are you high? What was that about the Queen’s bitch?”

“Who’s there?” she asked.

“Get up sleepy butt,” said the voice, while Lillian now identified as a woman. It then laughed wheezily. “That roughly rhymed,” she said, still giggling like a hyperactive schoolgirl, although she sounded like she was in her seventies. Lillians eyes adjusted once more and she saw that her tormentor was the gnarled old woman from the night before.

“Oh, it’s you,” she groaned. The woman’s smile faded and deepened into a scowl that could freak the living hell out of t-rex.

“Lower the tone, girl. Of course it’s freakin’ me, who the hell else would it be?”

“All right, all right, just less of the stick beating please?”

“Oh you prissy Brits and your high and posh demands. ‘Oh I want tea, cheerio, ‘ello guvna’,” laughed the woman, somehow still managing to scowl. She said the last part in a phony British accent, mixed hideously with a Boston accent. Lillian prickled with annoyance.

“Oh ha ha, Gristle, ha ha,” said Lillian sarcastically. Lillian’s mind was still reeling from the dream. The Doctor in the, what was it? DISCARD, TRAVIS, BEARTRAP, BACON, TURKMENISTAN? T-T-T-TARDIS! Yes that was it! Lillian still had no idea what the fuck a TARDIS was. She assumed it was a very advanced machine however. But she wasn’t so sure. The contraption seemed to be sentient, and the Doctor seemed to love it very much, more than natural for a machine. She still lay there in her trench coat and sweatshirt and blanket as she contemplated her life. Gristle broke her out of her reverie.

“Hey! Didn't I say to fucking get up?”

“Holy friggin Jesus’s ass, Gristle, watch the damn language.” Lillian felt another hard rap on her head. That’s gonna be a bitch to keep hidden, she thought as she rubbed the second lump on her head. She groped around for the beanie hat and shoved it on, ignoring the dull throb of paint from the lumps on her head.

“I’m  the one giving the orders here, alright?” rasped Gristle. The old woman came forward into the light and revealed herself, in all her wrinkly, white-haired, sweatpant-clad glory. The light threw her hooked nose into sharp relief. Her face looked very pissed off, but her eyes sparkled with a dark amusement. Lillian quite thought she resembled an angry tortoise. She brandished a silver walking stick.

“Don’t make me use this again, Lillian Mayfield Davies.”

Lillian knew that Gristle had invoked the use of the dreaded full name, which usually meant bad, no matter how it was used. She quickly threw off her blanket and buttoned up her trench coat. The mattress creaked and groaned roughly as she got up. As Lillian stood up, copious amounts of dust cascaded off her clothes. Both Lillian and Gristle went into a coughing fit.

“Okay,” said Gristle through her coughing, “that is not natural.” The vast dust cloud surrounding them slowly dissipated as a breeze rushed in through the windows, chilling Lillian to her bones, despite her many layers.

“Damn it, who the hell leaves a window open in New York?” said Lillian. “So, are we goin- AAAHAHAAAAAA!” Lillian was roughly cut off as she slipped on something. Upon later inspection, the thing was seen to be a dark patch of black ice. She knew that leaving the window open was an incredibly stupid idea. The mid-December temperatures of New York were not doing wonders for her health. As she tumbled backwards, she tried to break her fall with her hands. Her hands and back crashed to the hard stone floor and Lillian heard a nasty crack. A lightning bolt of pain immediately flashed through her right arm.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

Lillian’s scream echoed through the abandoned warehouse. The other inhabitants shot up immediately and rushed towards her. Noises and footsteps could be heard on the other floors. Gristle leaned down and inspected Lillian for injuries. When she got to her hand, Gristle found that Lillian’s wrist was bent at a nasty angle. It was twisted horribly to the right. A large purple bruise was already spreading across Lillian’s arm. Many onlookers turned away from her, their faces turning a subtle shade of green. As Gristle poked and prodded at Lillian, other people poured in. The two muscular men who had carried Lillian yesterday ran to her side as she moaned, their bearded faces twisted in identical expressions of concern.

“Oh, I’m dying, I’m fucking dying, help me, for fuck’s sake!” groaned Lillian. Another stab of pain impaled itself in her arm.

Gristle snorted derisively. “Calm down girl, it’s just a broken wrist. You won’t be able to use it for a few weeks, but that’s what happens when you act like a damn fool.”

“Dammit!” exclaimed Lillian frustratedly. “I’m not the one who opened the freaking window! She turned to the muscular men. “Ant, Moose, help me up, please.” Both of them smiled. The men grabbed hold of her arms and yanked her up roughly. Lillian winced as she felt her wrist jerk again. Another man came from the back holding a roll of gauze and wooden plank. His eyes looked tired.

“Ah,” said Gristle. “Harry, you’re here.”

“Hold still,” he said, briefly nodding to Gristle. “This is only going to hurt a lot.” Lillian felt her hope dying as that sentence progressed. She was no stranger to pain, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“Well, gee,” she said sarcastically. “Thanks for sugarcoating it, Harry.” The man ignored her and set about wrapping her arm in the plank and the gauze. Lillian kept wincing and making snarky remarks all through it. “Was that Harry?” asked Lillian.

The guy wrapping her arm got up and said, with the air of someone restraining himself from doing something drastic, “She’ll be fine, just tell her to lay off her arm for a few weeks.”

“Well, blimey, Harry,” said Lillian. “No need to be so tetchy.” Harry walked away. After a few seconds, they heard a loud, lingering yell from the floor below them.

“I think you need to lay off the sarcasm, missy,” reprimanded Gristle, dodging the question. “That man is our only man with any medical experience, and I will not have you pissin’ him off.” She turned around on her heel and stalked off into the warehouse with her walking stick.

Lillian sat there wondering what she had done wrong. She looked at the tall muscular men, Ant and Moose. They walked over to her and sat next to her. The two men were twins, with massive muscles and thick stubble. The only difference was Ant had hazel eyes and Moose had green ones.

“Ah, don’t worry ‘bout it,” said Ant in his customary Brooklyn accent. “Gristle’s always been pissed at everyone and everything.”

Moose joined in. “Yeah, Mom’s not usually in the best of moods.”

Lillian let out a loud bark of laughter. “Yeah, I can see that,” she said. “But shy does she a have to direct it all at me?”

“I guess you remind her of herself," said Moose. “Hey we’re going to-”

“the-,” said Ant

“soup-”

“kitchen-”

“you wanna”

“come?”

Lillian didn’t feel hungry at that particular moment. “No thanks guys,” she said.

Ant shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

She watched through her third-story window as the brothers walked out of the building. The building was an old abandoned storage warehouse. It was a five-story building made of brick and cinder blocks. The windows were old and cracked, and some of the broken ones had to be sealed up with cloth. After the building’s abandonment thirty years prior, Gristle and some of her hobo buddies took up residence, and now the building was colloquially known as the Warehouse. Gristle became the leader. It was cold in the winter, and blistering in the summer, but it was home to at least fifty homeless people, Lillian included. Some people had started a petition to renovate the place and make it fit for living. While it had been hooked up to the power grid and water system, and major cracks had been sealed, it still took a lot of work to make the place fit for human habitation. Mattresses were given by the local mattress stores, blankets from donations drives, and clothes as well. Food and money occasionally came too, but it was rare that they had more than a sandwich at a time to eat. Meals were usually limited to breakfast and lunch, and they were all hardened to the cold and starvation that was homelessness.

Lillian had arrived fifteen years prior, disheveled and burned, her clothes ashen and tattered. Her hair was damn near burned off and her face was streaked with mud and grime. Tears were openly flowing like a river and her face was stricken with fear. The current inhabitants of the home, with Gristle being known as Martha as the time, asked her what happened. She had told them her orphanage burned down and she was being chased by strange metal men. Naturally, with the people of the Warehouse being adults, they had of course dismissed the men as a traumatized child's imagination. Lillian herself became doubtful of her thoughts in the months after the fire. Metal men? That was silly. She had never seen them since, but she remembered them.

Lillian began to think about Gristle. Gristle was a woman in her late sixties and used to be pretty, very flirtatious, infectiously cheerful. She had a husband, who loved her immensely. Until one fateful day. He was walking home with a cheeseburger to share with his wife. Then a man came from a dark alley and stabbed him multiple times in his chest. They didn’t find his body until a week later. It smelled terrible. There were maggots and flies crawling over the body. The police never bothered to make a case because a homeless man “wasn’t worth their time.” When Lillian had heard about this incident, she was angry. She had asked in an raging voice why. She never received a straight answer.

Gristle and her adopted sons spent the time burying the body, bearing through the stench. From then on, Gristle became angry and bitter at the world. She only opened herself to a select few, most of whom were herself. Lillian was in that inner circle, and her not even that much. Gristle got her name because she was tough, like the stubbornly hard bits of meat in sandwiches and burgers. The name was cruel, but Gristle stuck with it. After her husband died, all she had were Ant and Moose. The nicknames cropped up for reasons unknown, but their original names were Emmerson and Edgar. They were abandoned and left for dead on the doorstep of the Warehouse and Gristle took them in as her own sons. They were even closer to her than Lillian was.

Lillian heard a faint beeping noise. It was the digital watch she had found while roaming Wall Street. The Warehouse was in Harlem, and she had walked for over an hour to get to Wall Street. She had wanted to see how the rich and fancy lived, while the poor suffered and died in the shadows and the woodworks of society. What she had seen disgusted her. People driving in fancy Cadillacs and paying no mind to the starving girl in the midst of them all.

The watch read twelve o’ clock pm. It was time for lunch. Lillian headed away from the living quarters on the the second and third floors and up to the makeshift cafeterias on the fourth and fifth floors. The rusty, dilapidated staircase scratched at her hands and she made her way to the upper dining hall. She found several crates up on a large plastic table. Each of them read: Sauce, Grains, Plants, Meat, Sweets. She grabbed a slice of bread and spread a layer of happiness on it, AKA Nutella. This process was slightly tricky as her wrist was broken.As she was spreading she heard someone else coming up.

The sound of footsteps grew louder. The decades-old door creaked open as a man walked in, his feet clicking on the tiled floor. He was tall and dressed in an old pinstripe suit with a faded purple cashmere coat. His beard and hair were down to his mid-torso and he wore ripped boots. Both of them were a bright blonde color. They were almost white, white masked his greying scalp. His vivid green eyes were lined with weariness, but had a sort of tense intelligence to them. It was Harry.

“Hello, Lillian,” he said. “Although this is a chance encounter, I want you to know that I forgive you for your, shall I say, sass from earlier.” He smiled. Harry knew he was homeless, yet he spoke royally, as though he were a king in a magnificent palace rather than a broken old man in homeless shelter. “I know that our circumstances were dire, and you were simply looking for something to halt or stall or mask the pain.” Lillian felt sudden warmth for the man in front of her. However, she knew that something was off. Harry was usually a happy, yet silent person. Today, his eyes were lackluster, missing the youthful glow that had enlightened them in all the times Lillian had seen him. His hair had a twig stuck in it.

Why was it there, Lillian wondered. As if reading her thoughts, Harry responded.

“Ah yes,” he said understandingly. His voice was soft and soothing, like a doctor’s should be. “That is a family thing, an old tradition that we used to have. My daughter would bring in various trinkets from outside, and I’d wear them proudly. My wife disapproved, if you can imagine, always saying my hair was ‘uncouth’ and ‘rowdy.’” His smile slowly faded away at the mention of his family. He smiled sadly. Harry’s face was thoughtful. As he opened his mouth to say something, he suddenly stopped. His face was stuck in an “o” position. Lillian rushed over to him. He didn’t seem to be breathing. What was happening? she thought. Was Harry ill? She rushed back to her plate, which she had carelessly left at this edge of the table. She gasped loudly when she saw what had happened to it. It was suspended between the table and the floor, the butter knife an inch away from the ground, the top slice halfway off the bottom. She peered at it for a few seconds, then ran towards it, wondering what the hell had just happened.

“Okay,” she muttered. “Definitely freaking out now.” Lillian rushed over to the window. All the birds outside were frozen, some pigeons stuck on some crumbs, a crow frozen in a mid-caw position. People in the streets had stopped, and so had the clouds, the flags, everything was just inexplicably stopped. “Freaking out more.” Lillian was desolately wondering what to do when she heard an incredibly weird noise. At first, she thought it was her imagination, but then it got louder. It sounded, mechanical, yet lively. Vworp, Vworp, Nyoooooom, Nyoooooooooom, Nyooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom.

Lillian felt a whooshing of air coming from behind her and she turned around and gasped again, this time almost screaming. Something very odd was happening. Something was materializing out of thin air, something… blue. As its molecules slowly came into view, Lillian found out it was a box. A box with eight windows, two doors, and a lightbulb on top. There was a sign above each side. It read “POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX.” Lillian’s face at that moment was at the same position as Harry’s. A perfect “o” for a mouth.

“What the fuck is a police box?” said Lillian, recovering from her surprise. Just then, the door opened with a lingering creak. An enormous mass of smoke poured out, and two fingers rushed out, coughing and retching. One of them was in a tweed jacket and brown slacks with small black boots. The other was a woman with short brown hair, a sweater and a skirt. The tweed one turned around and yelled into the box.

“Extractor fans on!” he yelled over the smoke and the vworping. The smoke rapidly began to dissipate. The man turned around, a smile on his face, which quickly faded as he saw Lillian. The woman straightened up, and she too, looked awestruck by what she saw. The man reached out to poke her and almost did, but his finger dissolved into mist right as it reached her nose. His face turned comically grumpy. He ran a hand through his quiff, his babyish face looking annoyed. His finger rematerialized in a matter of seconds.

“Temporal projection,” he said gravely. “The Daleks are mucking about again, hoovering up anything weird in time that they can find.” He turned around heading back to the police box. “Come on, Clara, we got to go, we can’t stay here.” The woman, Clara, was still dumbstruck by Lillian.

“But Doctor,” she said. “Isn’t she-?”

“Yes, she is, but we can’t stay here, reality will blow up it time stays frozen any longer, COME ON!”

“But-”

“Just listen to me this once, Clara, we can come back to her later!” Clara still hesitated.

The Doctor tried again. “Listen Clara,” he said. “This. Is. Not. Real. A temporal projection is a timey-wimey-spacey-wacey thing. It’s when there’s a dimensional rift opens right on top of someone and we can see what’s on the other side of it. We are not actually here, we are in the TARDIS unconscious. Time is frozen here, and if time freezes too long, the energy builds up and reality explodes!"

Clara sighed with defeat. “Fine,” she said shortly. She glanced back one last as she stepping into the box. “We will come back,” she mouthed as she stepped back into the box.

The same vworping mechanical noise happened and the box slowly faded. Lillian snapped out of her dumbness.

“BUT WAIT!” she roared. “COME BACK! WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!” But all her yells were to no avail. No matter what she said or did, the box was gone, and stayed gone.

Suddenly, everything came back all at once. She heard a dull thud as her sandwich hit the floor. Harry continued to talk, but stopped abruptly, looking confused. “I’m sorry, what was I saying.”

Lillian looked at him dejectedly. “Nothing,” she said. “You were just about to leave,” she said. She sighed and walked out of the room, leaving a puzzled Harry alone with the food.

“Was it something I said?” he asked, confused, as Lillian walked down the stairwell. Lillian was thinking about heading outside and taking a walk, when she suddenly felt a stabbing pain in her temples. Oh no, she thought. Fuck. The pain intensified and crescendoed to a massive pitch. A piercing ring echoed in her ears. Through the blinding fog of pain, she saw something, a very strange something.

It was like a saltshaker, if saltshakers were like battle tanks. It had a black base, and the midsection was studded with jet-black balls, which were glowing dully. The middle of the thing was one of the weirdest objects Lillian had ever seen. It was located between where the cap and the glass of a regular saltshaker would be. It was streaked with black and had a long metal arm with a sucker at the end, along with a metal whisk-like object that looked very deadly indeed. The top of the thing, where the cap of a saltshaker would be, was a domed cap, with a black eyestalk tipped with a yellow eye at the end. On either side of the eyestalk were two flashing lights that flashed which each syllable the creature  spoke. It spoke in a raspy mechanical voice that screamed despite the low volume of the voice.

“I am the Supreme Dalek,” it said. “You have been located. You will be EXTEEEERMINATED.” The creature, the Dalek, slowly dissipated, still screaming “EXTERMINATE” in a loud, frantic tone.  Lillian struggled to maintain consciousness, until she finally succumbed to the pain, and was engulfed by blackness.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	5. The Cybermen

Most people can agree that the Earth in a wondrous place, aside from humans constantly screwing it up all the time. However, most people forget that things may or may not loom in the cosmos. And in most cases, they do. One of the closest galaxies to Earth is the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, located a mere seventy thousand light-years away, and is ten thousand light-years across. Shortened as Sag DEG(Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy), it is one of the older galaxies, filled with old stars and not a lot of interstellar dust. At the same moment the Daleks vanished into the Time Vortex, something strange was happening in the Sag DEG. The scientists at NASA and the observatory on Mauna Kea were currently scrambling and scratching their heads. A few of the weaker willed ones were breaking down silently. What was happening at that moment defied everything those physicists and astronomers has been studying their entire lives.The Sag DEG was rapidly expanding, the small cluster of white flaming gas balls ballooning out at an alarming rate.

 

**NASA**

_Mauna Kea Volcano, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, North America, Earth, Human Solar System, Milky Way_

_Sunday December 18, 2016, Earth Time_

The Mauna Kea Observatory located smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is an ideal location for those who wish to glimpse the immediate area surrounding the planet. Of course, those people know that “immediate area” means the surrounding hundred million light-years, but that’s still a rather miniscule portion of the universe. The massive white domes that cover five hundred acres on the slopes of the Mauna Kea are located a decent height above sea level, so high that one would be able to see over the clouds if he or she were perched on the vertigo-inducing cliffs. There is a constant eerie yet peaceful silence on the mountain that is only softly punctured by the chilling wind howling through the skies. The observatory is rather cold, obviously, despite the island’s close proximity to the equator, due to its being thousands of feet above the land below. Providing a sharp contrast  to the creepy silence outside, inside at that very moment, there was a sharply panicked turmoil resounding through the corridors. An alarm blared, throwing everyone in the observatory into a chaotic confusion. A frantic voice rang out over the intercom.

“All astronomers and physicists,” said an excited female voice, crackling with static. “Report to the executive desk immediately.” There was a flurry of movement as the scientists rushed to where they were being summoned. A confused murmur made its way throughout the confused throng of scientists as they tried to figure out why they were being called.

The last time the management called up the scientists to meet was when it was discovered that the Milky Way and Andromeda were going to collide, and they needed the scientists to figure out when. A chilly fog of apprehension lay over the mob of geniuses as they slowly and noisily made their way to the meeting office. All of them thought the same thing

What the hell is going on?

The mechanical door opened up with a loud, electronic whirring. Inside, a short, skinny woman with an pale and aristocratic face sat at a table, tapping a microphone. When she heard the clambering of people rushing in, she turned around and tried to address the throng.

“Hello!” she said. “Listen! Hello? Anyone?” She tried in vain a couple more times to capture the crowd’s attention, but to no effect. She dug around for something to attract the attention. As she frantically shovelled for something she could use, the crowd milled about uncertainly. The woman yelled in triumph as she somehow found a bullhorn under her desk. She yelled into it.

“Hello!” she screamed. “Your attention please.” Many people winced as the blare of the woman’s voice pierced their eardrums. “Sorry about that, well not really, but I needed your attention. Now listen up! Something weird is happening, something we can't explain, and we need the help of you incompetent buffoons to figure it out.” Many people disregarded the woman’s rudeness, as she was the head of the base, Mara Nostram. “I can’t really explain it, so kindly glance up at the screens.”

The room they were in was a small circular room with a large desk at the front and an intercom system. Several other desks were there for Nostram’s partners and the other base managers. There were a few coolers and a mini-kitchen off to the side, opposite the main desk. However, suspended ten feet above the the desks were a series of seventy-inch flat screen tv’s, encircling the top of the room, where the walls met the domed roof. At Nostram’s command, they flickered on and what the astronomers and physicists and other -ists and -ers and -ologists saw caused a confusion.

On the screens at that moment was a small, pale white cloud against the spectacular background of the Milky Way. Nostram continued.

“As many of you know,” she began. “this is the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, or Sag DEG for short.” Someone in the audience raised their hand. “Yes, you?”

“Ma’am, we know this is the Sag DEG, but what is so special about it?” asked a tall, timid man.

“That,” said Nostram, pointing at him, "is a very good question. The picture on the screens as of this very moment in the Sag DEG this morning. This is a live feed that started at exactly 1300 hours. It is 1600 hours now.” The image changed and all the smart people in the room gasped. The cloud of stars was at least twenty times bigger. The timid man spoke again.

“But, but, but that’s impossible. That defies everything we have studied, all the laws of physics…” He trailed off.

“That is exactly my point, Geoff,” said Mara. “I need to know what the hell is going on. That galaxy is seventy thousand light-years away, so even if such a drastic change were to occur, we would not know until the year 72016. Something is accelerating the speed of light around that galaxy, and something is causing that galaxy to expand outwards. Our thermal telescopes have detected that no new stars are being created, but there are objects the size of planets in the middle. Now figure out what the hell is going on!”

The teams of scientists set out to solve what would later be known as the Sag DEG phenomenon. Little did they know that something much bigger than them was happening. A sinister plot was afoot and if it were to succeed, the universe would never be the same.

 

**UNIT HQ, Kate Stewart**

_Tower of London, London, England, Great Britain, Europe, Earth, Human Solar System, Milky Way_

_Thursday December 22, 2016, Earth Time_

The entire headquarters was in disarray. After receiving the urgent message from the Torchwood team, the team at UNIT set about to find out just exactly what the hell was wrong with the Sag DEG. Naturally what the task force decided to do first was have Martha Jones call the Doctor, but then they rapidly realized that they couldn’t, due to the unfortunate circumstances. Martha was currently in the year 1922 on her honeymoon with Mickey Smith. They had asked the Doctor to take them back to the “roaring twenties” for a good time. And to cap the whole fiasco off, they had not heard from the Doctor in months and a good number of their staff were dead, killed by Zygons during the invasion. Occasionally computers would catch fire from overuse or people would end up crying due to nervous breakdowns. Basically the entire facility was a massive wreck. Up in the Tower of London, a good twenty-seven meters above the city, Kate sat in her office, filling out the paperwork for yet another breakdown. Her face was older than it was in the Zygon invasion, and that took place three years ago. The stress of the job as leader of UNIT had gotten to her over the years. Kate’s eyes suddenly blazed. She grabbed the paper and tore it into shreds, screaming.

“WHAT THE HELL!” she shrieked. “WHY DOES THIS KEEP BLOODY HAPPENING TO ME?!” She reached into her holster and took out a pistol. She aimed it at the shreds of paper and fired, emptying the entire magazine. Several armed guard thundered into the room, nearly breaking the door off its hinges as they barged in, guns blazing.

“MA'AM GET DOWN!" they yelled as they broke the door down. Kate had a brief moment to register how strange the situation was. She was standing there with a gun drawn at a pile of bullet holes and shredded paper, her pale blonde Draco Malfoy hair strung wildly across her face. Her jacket was buttoned up unevenly and a strand of hair was in her mouth. Kate came back to her senses. No, they could not see her like this, at her most vulnerable. She had a position of authority to uphold after all. She cleared her throat and straightened up, putting the gun away.

“Nothing is wrong, gentlemen,” she said calmly, like the men had just witnessed her eating some chips. She spit out her hair. “Just a bit of.. ah… occupational stress,” she finished after a pause. The guards looked puzzled. “Like I said,” insisted Kate. “I’m fine.” She said the last word with devastating authority.

“But ma’am…”

“GO!”

The guards jumped and hastily vacated the room. Kate could still hear their hushed voices down the hall.

“Off her rocker, that one.”

“She’ll get us all killed!”

“I think it’s time for a new management.”

Kate sighed. They’re right, she thought. I’m losing my touch.

Ever since Kate's promotion back in 2014, she was slowly going insane, her brain becoming scattered from all the stress. She knew that the guards were right about her failure. When she’d gotten promoted, she’d been offered an office at Buckingham Palace, but she chose to stay at her current position. She glanced at the photo of her father on her desk, Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. He was an old man much like her, same smooth, kind face, short hair and old and tired eyes, and a sense of humor firmly buried under a stern demeanor. Kate sighed deeply, tears welling up in her eyes.

“What am I supposed to do, Dad,” she said, her voice breaking. She put her head down as the sunset went down over London, the Eye casting massive shadows over the rest of the city. Why did all the bad things happen to Kate?  To cap all her troubles off, the Doctor was MIA. The only bright spot in her life was her daughter, who had taken over her old position of scientific advisor, and she was off in Prague for some sort of study. The alarm above her door rang, and Kate was abruptly jerked out of her stupor. She heaved a sigh of compliance and gathered her things and left the room. The Tower was being vacated of all UNIT staff. Tourist hours ended an hour before Kate’s work time so no one would freak out over someone leaving the tower. She headed to her luxury penthouse overlooking the Thames and got into bed. She fell asleep like a rock in water.

 

 

 

BRRRING!

BRRRING!

BRRRING!

Kate jerked awake and threw off her covers, a gun drawn and ready to fire. That was what was annoying about being leader. You had to get messages at any time. She put down the gun that she kept under her pillow and checked her phone. She had received a text. The clock display showed 2:53 AM. She checked her text messages with trepidation. This was highly unusual, receiving a text at this house, to her personal phone nonetheless The message read: MS. STEWART. SORRY TO WAKE YOU BUT THIS IS A MATTER OF UTMOST URGENCY. “Well then get on with it,” muttered Kate. AN OBJECT TELEPORTED FROM SAG DEG TO THE SKIES. IT CRASHED LANDED AT APPROXIMATELY 2:15 AM IN PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC. 2:15 AM. Nearly forty-five minutes ago. That was where her daughter Janet was. WE THOUGHT YOU’D LIKE TO SEE. Sag deg projectile.png was attached. Kate opened it up.  

“No,” she whispered. “Not them.”

What she saw filled her with a deep fear. She shook violently, almost dropping her phone. She paced the room, working up a cold sweat. After ten minutes, she shook herself. No, this is not the way a leader should behave. She sat down on her bed and tried to go back to sleep, but to no avail. What was on her phone was a gray metallic head, with blackened patches when it was burned on its descent onto Earth. It had hollow holes black eyes and a slit for a mouth. There was no other facial features. The face was angular with a prominent chin and there was a metal bar connected to the head, sort of like handles. Kate had never seen these creatures before, but she knew what they were, and for them to be so close to Earth, with means of teleportation? Disastrous. The Cybermen were back.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Kate’s morning commute was congested and crowded. Apparently the mysterious “meteor” in the Czech Republic had caused distinct amounts of stress because the people of London feared yet another attempted alien incursion. Her face was calm as she drove through the crowded streets of downtown London, people rushing to say goodbye to their family and friends before the “apocalypse.” When she finally got to the tower of London and looked over the city, she saw something new. Pillars of smoke blossomed up from several spots in the city, obviously riot sites. Those idiots, she thought. We’ve had worse, stop panicking. Kate sat down at her desk and took a pen, ready to fill out all the days paperwork.

About ten minutes in, she abruptly straightened up. The scratching of the pen stopped. Kate slowly got up. Something’s not right here, she thought. All that could be heard were the distant sounds of riots and police cars. The increasing feeling of unease still held Kate in its grasp. She got up and pulled out her gun. She slowly opened the door, pointing her gun out scanning all possible points of entry. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She made her way down to the bottom floor. A strange smell reached her nostrils, like that of overcooked meat. She followed the smell to the source, still creeping.

She reached the elevator to find the secret underground UNIT base. The only parts above ground were the executive offices, like hers. The elevator key card scanner was gone, two meter-long live wires jutting out from the iPad sized hole in the wall. That didn’t bode well. Kate forced open the elevator doors and went down to level 1: Utilities and Priority 1 staff.

She found herself in a massive hallway plated with chrome. Her heels made resounding clicking noises as she walked down the hallway. The doors on either sides were also busted off, the offices and rooms inside pouring smoke. One of them even had a small ember blazing on the computer. As the end of the hallway was a set of double doors.

“I really don’t like this,” she whispered to herself.

She reached for a door, the door to the lunch room. It was a set of thick wooden panels made of blue steel. The room was a large rectangular hall, with 15 rows of tables, each one having two of them, each one 5 meters long. The aisle was three meters wide, with a red walkway. The kitchens were at the opposite side of the massive hall.

It was at that moment she realized what was wrong. It was too quiet. It was 7:32 AM, time for breakfast, and everyone but Kate would be there. The sound should have been about as loud as a football stadium. As she threw open that door, she screamed. The burning smell came from that room., stronger than ever. Burnt black humanoid figures lay everywhere. Everyone was dead.

Kate fought back an overwhelming wave of nausea. The flesh of the bodies were singed, the guards more than others, most likely due to the fact that they decided to fight back against whatever malevolent entity was responsible for this.

Thin wisps of steam curled off the bodies of people. The kills were obviously fresh. Kate managed to avoid throwing up, though her face was still a little green. She was as tense as a cat, and just as lithe, for an older woman. Her gun was slightly raised. But her luck so far had run out.

Behind her, she heard the chunk chunk chunk of footsteps, like that of a monstrous piston. They stopped. She turned around and was about to shoot, when a sound like a laser resounded through the room. The doors blasted off their hinges. Another laser. Kate raised up and  shot two random bullets. She heard two heavy clunking noises.

Kate continued to shoot off bullets at her fancy, running to the kitchens. A few of them were followed with more clunk noises. As she turned around to stand against assailants, she felt a burning pain in her gun hand, followed by a splash of blood. She raised her gun hand again, only to feel… nothing. She tried to raise her hand again. Still nothing. She looked at her shoulder, only to see a stump, coated in blood, the smell of burning flesh coming from within.

“GAH!” Kate yelled.

She retched, holding back the floodgates of her stomach. Her breathing intensified as she began to panic. Where had her arm gone?

She looked the other way, and saw her right arm lying two meters away with the gun still in hand, the shoulder of it smoking with an acrid stench.

Kate’s head began to spin. She collapsed and black spots appeared on the edge of her vision. She vomited all over the table for about thirty seconds and then stopped heaving and looked up. What she saw was too much for her, and her consciousness began to fade. The last thing she saw was a tall gray shiny figure looking down at her, walking with the same metallic piston sound. A Cyberman.

“Kate Stewart has been captured. Scheduled for immediate UPGRADE!”

Kate blacked out.

 

**The Warehouse, Lillian Davies**

_New York, New York, USA, North America, Earth, Human Solar System, Milky Way_

_Saturday December 24, 2016_

The last thing Lillian remembered before her headache was… salt? She dreamed a terrifying dream in her coma. She seemed to be floating in space.

“What? What the hell? FUCK!” Lillian screamed as as something gargantuan and silver shot across near her, sending her flying away.

A jet of flame that looked to be several million miles long followed the silver thing, which she assumed was a spaceship. Lillian felt like she had to follow the craft, and looked at it’s trailing form with disappointment. Then, with a sudden swooping sensation, she suddenly appeared alongside the ship. The sheer size of the ship dawned on her. The ship was the size of  the moon, shaped like a sideways cone, with a large sphere at the front. The flames behind it gave the ship the image of a gigantic metal comet. There was a massive logo in red blocky font emblazoned on the side. Cybus Industries. What’s Cybus industries? thought Lillian. She had a feeling of foreboding. She was about to will herself into the ship, when she suddenly realized the weirdness of her surroundings. She was in space of course, but she saw nothing but a massive glowing white cloud around her. Patches were in the cloud, exposing the blackness of space, ranging anywhere from two miles to two light years. Starkly contrasting against the white cloud were more comet-shaped ships, only smaller. Except their engines were turned off, and they were floating there, menacingly. Hundreds of the ships, each with several thousand tiny pods along the side, with likely more creatures inside. Almost like…

“They’re making an army,” said Lillian quietly.

She floated there in her dream for several minutes and took in the terrifying majesty of the Cybus army. Cybus Industries, whatever they were, were planning an invasion. Then she steeled herself, putting on a mask to disguise her fear. She willed herself inside. Her vision faded to black, and reappeared. She was in a large oval-shaped room. Three windows were on one side, facing into space, each one the size of an SUV. There was a raised platform facing the windows, with a set of stairs on either end of it. A tall, black, and shiny figure stood there. in the middle. The side with the windows had a large control panel spanning the length of it, covered in buttons and levers. There was a massive joystick in the middle, presumably used for the steering the behemoth of a spacecraft. The entire room glowed with a blueish hue. A door at the other side of the room opened with a hiss, and the figure in black turned around with a clunking and stomping noise. Lillian gasped as she realized it was a metal man. Its movements seemed to be slightly impeded, like its joints had limited capabilities. Its face was a black mask with two hollow pits where the eyes would be and a slit for a mouth. There was a pane of glass on its forehead, giving a hideous view of… was that a brain?

Lillian silently scowled in disgust. That was revolting. Another metal man walked through the door, this one gray. He spoke in a bland, robotic tone, seeming to defer to the black one.

“Cyber Leader,” he said. “We have successfully infiltrated the Sag DEG. The humans are noticing this.” Lillian had the feeling that the Cyber Leader would smile if he could.

“Good,” he said. “Our artificial wormholes are working. Have the humans seen anything amiss yet?

“Yes sir,” said the grunt.

“Tell the troops that as soon as the humans ready their cosmic weaponry, we attack. Expect casualties.” The leader’s voice made Lillian shudder. It was deep, as deep as a large man talking into a tube, and as raspy as a broken violin.

“One more thing to report, Sir,” said the grunt. “My team has failed to find out the secret to the Medusa Cascade. The Daleks have escaped” The Cyber Leader’s eyes glowed. Dream Lillian was confused. What did the Daleks have to do with this?

“The Cybermen do not tolerate failure,” he said. The eyes of the lower class Cyberman flashed once, and he seemed to be frozen.

The leader raised his hand. A blue light emanated from the palm. was lifted into the air. His hands clutched where his ears would be if he was human and he screamed an agonizing scream. Sparks and tongues of flame shot out of his eye and mouth holes. Smoke began pouring out of his head. His joints started sparking and began to pop off. Plink plink plink. After his legs fell off and his fingers began to do so, the grunt stopped screaming. There was a moment of silence. Then…

KA-BOOSH

The grunt’s head exploded, chunks of flaming metal and brains splattered over the walls. The torso thudded to the ground with a forlorn clang. The Leader’s body glowed hot, vaporizing the brain matter off of him. He pressed a button next to the steering joystick “Clean up on head office, priority now.” he said into a series of slats. That must be a microphone, Lillian realized. Then something strange began to happen.

Around Lillian’s frame of vision, red and gold lightning crackled, and it kept expanding until her view was exposed. She felt a blinding pain in her temples. Oh no. Not again.

Lillian yelled out at the day as she woke up, breathing heavily. Where was she? What the hell was happening? The Warehouse, New York, wasn’t it? Then she remembered her dream, or vision, or whatever the hell it was. Metal men were planning to take over the world. What a strange concept. Her headache started again, images flashing through her mind. A young blond man and and some people surrounding him, running from Cybermen into… a police box? What? Wasn’t that what the Doctor had had?

A young blond woman getting sucked into a black portal, Cybermen and Daleks along with her, a run down amusement park invaded by armies of Cybermen. The pain stopped and Lillian shook herself. She would ponder those visions later. She had bigger problems to deal with.

She shuddered at the way the leader had so callously killed the grunt. Those Cybermen, or whatever they were, were planning to invade. They were terrifying, emotionless, with absolutely no qualms on what they had to do to reach their goals. She had to tell someone, but who? She was already homeless, and no one would believe her anyway. She got up from her bed in the corner and pulled back the curtains.

The day glowed, the sun shining bright and the cold December air lightly frosting the window. The birds twittered and there was the faint sound of the traffic outside and the wind blowing gently.  It was a few moments before it began to kick into Lillian that the Warehouse was too quiet. The Warehouse was never quiet. She pulled open her curtains all the way.

She stumbled back a few paces. Her face was grim and slightly queasy. Blood was everywhere. The window had a smeared handprint on it. The other window was broken and shattered. The edges of the glass were covered in blood, like someone’s head was forced through it. There was a bloody mass in the corner of the room, something splayed out of it. Was that an intestine? The room looked like a gruesome remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There was a severed head in the corner.

“What the hell happened here?” she said to herself.

The got up off the bed, still in her hiking boots and trench coat. There was a particularly sharp rock on the ground. Lillian picked it up and wielded it in a combat stance, having taught herself to use a knife at a young age.

She crept along the floor, her boot rupturing the pools of dried blood. She got to the head, suddenly apprehensive as to whose it was.

The head was clearly a woman, and an old one at that. A large hole was taken out of her skull.  Her brain seemed to be missing. Lillian suddenly backed away, tears filling her eyes. There was no mistaking that wild wiry hair and that crabby old face, even if it was twisted in pain. The head was Gristle’s.


End file.
